


Never Goodbye.

by Sasscroft99



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 09:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4055374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasscroft99/pseuds/Sasscroft99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara had always loved the adventures she shared with her Doctor, however, suddenly, things just don't seem the same. They've just returned from an exceptionally dangerous adventure, and The Doctor is not all there.<br/>She knows she had to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: No, no, I do not own or claim to own the wonderful characters, they are all the belonging of the BBC, and I only borrow them to shove them in little headcanon situations. 
> 
> Enjoy.

It was suddenly eerily strange how devoid of noise the TARDIS seemed, after being thrown into a battle ground, chewed up, and fished back out at the last minute. Why does it always seem that everything is last minute? All those dangers, everywhere, surrounding them like a cloud, obscuring their vision – and the rescue? Uncertain, heart beats away from too late. Last minute.

What if, Clara wondered, one time, it came too late? Heart beats, and then instead of a breath of relief, nothing. The Doctor had always warned her about the dangers of travelling with him, in fact he had insisted to list everyone who had ever been in a ten centimetre radius of his person and had the misfortune of dying. How, then, did it only dawn on her at that specific moment, as she sat on one of the TARDIS steps, eyes wide and arms circled tightly around her legs, the great dangers she was putting herself through daily; time and time again?  And why did it only then cause such an earth-shattering realization about her evident mortality?

Clara Oswald had always been the adventurous type, the brave one perhaps. It never bothered her before; the underlying peril that pried on The Doctor’s life, and therefore hers as a default. She would be dragged quite literally, and tossed into another adventure, another mess that the universe hides away in a different planet most humans never get to see. She had dreamt of something different, something more, her whole damn life and ever since she had first stepped into the TARDIS’s much bigger interior, Clara had never once looked back. She was his Impossible Girl – she was a mystery, the only one worth solving. She had always had The Doctor with her, and with him, even the most dangerous moments felt safe.

Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps that was it – the reason for her sudden change in heart. Clara looked up, eyes looking on as The Doctor zoomed around the TARDIS, as if life’s answers were waiting to be discovered, and only he could possibly uncover them. And that was likely true. To everyone else he may still look like The Doctor, the Time Lord that the whole universe feared and knew. But Clara saw it; the shift, the change. He did this sometimes, drifted away. He would get this distant look, and his eyes would glisten with something much greater and deeper than pain. It was at those times that he looked older than ever, and even though Clara would never tell anyone, it scared her. Terrified her. She did not want to see her Doctor like this, it made her feel like she had lost him, and he meant far too much to her for that. And there was another thing, something she could not possibly admit even to herself, but it was when she saw him like this that she knew her deepest, most wistful wish could not come true. Clara jumped and Clara ran, and Clara faced villain after villain with her clever boy. And she did it for him; she always did it for him. _Emergency, you’re my boyfriend._ Oh how she wished.

And it was times like these. Time like these that told her it would never happen, that laughed in her face and shook their head. That were the reason why she could never possibly admit to herself what she really longed for; much less admit it to him. Because he was unreachable - she could stand up then, and stretch out with her hand and touch him, and he would still be light years away.

 

And that was why Clara was realizing the dangers then, just back in the security of the TARDIS after a terribly close call. She was shaking and the Doctor was far away in his own mind, a place she could never possibly comprehend.

Clara’s throat was dry, and she felt as if she may cry, as breathing became more laboured and choking felt less like a possibility and more like an eventuality. She could not do this.

 

She could not do this. Not anymore.

 

There was no way around it. Clara could no longer dance through hoops, run in pretence of adventure, when really she was running away from reality. She had to leave.

 

With shaky hands, and her heart feeling heavy with sorrow, Clara slowly got up from the step she was occupying.

 

“Doctor?”

 

He did not respond straight away, and Clara nearly sobbed.

It took a while, but The Doctor eventually turned around and faced her, his smile as heavy has the weight of her felt on the TARDIS ground. It was as if he knew what her next words would be, but Clara said them anyway, because there was nothing else left to do.

 

“I have to go.”

 

He was wearing a mask, she knew he was. His smile was far too bright, his confusion far too forced.

 

“Go? But my dear Clara, we are about to go on another brilliant adventure, can’t it wait?”

 

“No- no Doctor. I – I mean I ha-have to g-go.” Clara was crying now, forcing the words out as her throat clogged up and her mind fogged with the idea of truly never seeing this man again.

 

The Doctor’s face grew sad, and he walked over to her, tilting his head as if he really could not understand her reasoning, but at the same time he understood. He understood perfectly.

 

“Yes... I suppose you do.” He said, looking at her with his wise, old eyes, and Clara wanted to grab him, to tell him that it was a joke, a sick, sick, terrible joke that she would never utter again, to tell him wait, to tell him stop-

 

But she couldn’t. If she didn’t do this now she would die. She would die seeing him wither away. It was better this way.

 

“Is this weakness, Doctor?”

 

He smiled at her kindly, sadly, lifted his arm and whipped away her tears with his thumb, traced the ghost of his finger over her cheek, “No, my Clara, it is true strength.”

 

“Goodbye Doctor.”

 

“Ah, but Clara, it is never goodbye. You will keep the memories, and therefore never lose me. It is simply... good day.”

 

Clara threw her arms over his neck, pressed her small frame against him and cried in his chest, and all the time he did not move. He let her cry her emotions out freely, and by doing so, The Doctor set her free.

In time, Clara pulled away, and even though she could not remember moving, she clearly had walked to the door of the TARDIS and opened it, to find that the TARDIS had stopped at her street, in front of her house.

She turned around, to look at The Doctor, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, and to her, The Doctor looked the oldest he had ever seemed, as he nodded at her, smiling his goofy smile all the same.

 

“I love you.” She whispered, and if he had heard, he didn’t show it.

And Clara turned around, silently bidding the TARDIS she had hated for a long while goodbye, or perhaps good day.

There was a sense of finality in it even so.


End file.
